this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2026
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So, one of the really interesting things to me about this approach is that it offers the same asymmetric value proposition that cheap attack drones do to modern pre-drone IADS.
That is: this is a platform that costs 10-15k, and an AGM-88 of modern manufacture costs almost 900k, and a Kh-31 costs about 550k - and, just as importantly, both require a long time to manufacture. So, you could theoretically make a moderately large distributed array sprinkled over a few square kilometers, and even if they’re ALL turned on, it quickly becomes logistically infeasible to knock them all out without spending a silly quantity on antirad munitions, as well as massively attriting your stocks of antirad munitions. And if you turn like 10-25% of them on at a time and cycle through your array, the problem becomes even harder for the attacker. And if you have some sort of process or mechanism - like, oh I don’t know, figuring out how to do light aerial transport with cargo drones, or even figuring out how to mount these distributed array nodes on the drones themselves, and some sort of lightweight tether for providing power - the problem becomes a MASSIVE pain in the ass for an adversary (especially that last idea, which introduces z-axis and immediate maneuverability, such that the array could feasibly detect and altogether avoid an incoming antirad munition).
And that’s the paradigm of modern warfare - not just drones, but also networked and attritable systems that maintain functionality when elements are taken offline
adding to this. I imagine that the emitter by itself costs a fraction, so set-up a huge array of these dumb emitters, and a few active systems randomly within that array. You'd essentially create an interdiction zone.
You'd end up jamming yourself. You can't really have radars or other strong electromagnetic warfare devices near each other operating on the same frequency since they tend to interfere and wash out each other's signals.
As a decoy makes sense though since you can send them far away on a drone or something.
You can if they're all synced up together
I think this is just the wrong intuition. Not a faulty one, but one which is mostly the same as the doctrine which is being exposed as entirely ineffective.
US military doctrine is the "towards complexity" doctrine such that your opponent also needs to follow you into complexity. This worked for the US in the post WWII era because it was coupled with an exponentially increasing economic output.
Whats being show, as doctrine, is "away from complexity" and "towards distributed" approach to warfighting ends up being far more effective.
So coming from, practically, 100 years of "more advanced more complicated technology and approaches are better" being doctrine, its understandable to want to add complexity to systems.
I can’t help but think this shift in doctrine could lead to the fall of an empire, with a new ideology in power rising from its ashes. We saw a very similar pattern during WWI, where changing doctrines led to an imperial collapse and paved the way for a new ideology taking power.
We might be on the verge of seeing history repeat itself.
That's just not how phased array systems work. The system we're talking about needs to have excruciatingly tight and correct timings regarding signal transmission and reception. These are beam forming systems, so a multidimensional array of antenna are using to steer the beam, using constructive and destructive interference to "point" the energy where you want it to go. That alone requires extremely tight timing. That's coupled with a phased array receiver system, so that you can detect very slight changes in the wavelength/ speed of the return signal to apply the doplar effect to detect things like motion. The github states that this system operates at 10.5 GHz, of which one RF cycle is about 95 ps, ~2.5cm. This puts the practical per-element beamforming granularity/error budget is very much in that sub-picosecond to picosecond-equivalent range. That would be practically impossible for anything but a coupled system.
Not completely impossible, I mean, probably US military systems exist in a decoupled system. But its technologically way, way way harder because timings need to be nano to pico second correct.
Maybe they could be synced using RF over fiber. This has been proposed as candidate technology for 6g wireless networks, to enable cell free massive MIMO.
That would mean that you would need to run optical fiber to each of them, though we've already seen fiber drones spool out kilometers of the stuff as they fly.
EDIT: I just remembered this interesting article about doing radio interferometry over a fiber network using cheap quartz oscillators instead of atomic clocks. My (layman's) understanding is that the quartz oscillators are good enough over a few milliseconds, but will fall out of sync with each other over longer time spans. Meanwhile the fiber optic reference signal (distributed from a central atomic clock) can be kept correct on average by reflecting the reference back down the fiber and doing active correction of the changing path length (caused by thermal fluctuations and vibrations along the fiber) but will be incorrect on a millisecond-to-miliscond basis because of light speed lag and the path length being a moving target. So they use the quartz oscillators over small time scales and use the fiber reference signal to keep them synced over long time scales. Surprisingly the article says they actually get a better sync this way than with using multiple atomic clocks.
So perhaps something like that is possible.
If everyone who studied this went into medicine instead of death…
"But I don't want to cure cancer. I want to turn people into dinosaurs."
The system being discussed is not explicitly or exclusively useful in military contexts. There are a LOT of places where advanced beam forming and radar capabilities could be useful outside of that. Not to mention: in military applications, this is pretty definitely a defensive system.
Unless I'm missing something in your plan i don't think that would work well. If these radar stations aren't surrounded by very serious defensive systems for hundreds of miles in every direction, then they'll simply be blown up by dumb howitzer shells that only cost around 2000 dollars.
Howitzers are cheap, relatively long range, mobile, and accurate enough. If you don't have strong enough defenses to prevent the howitzers from moving into range, then they'll just blow up all your radar stations with cheap shells.
The locating them is the problem I think
Locating the radar base station? No that's the easiest part. Radar is like turning on a Hollywood style searchlight pointing up into the sky. The instant you turn it on its extremely obvious where the radar searchlight is coming from
Yeah I should correct myself
Finding them isn't the hard part you are right. Finding a spot that you can shoot them from without being exposed yourself is the hard part. The range on an unguided howitzer is much less than radar, and the guided ones are more than $20,000 and the accurate range is not much longer than the cheap radar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur
Many counter fire radars have tracked their own incoming death. You have a good minute or so from first track until the round impacts. That’s enough time to track the round and send out a counterbattery mission destroying the fucks that killed you buy you’re still dead unless the round happens to be a dud.
Locating radar emissions is a passive process, it doesn't reveal your own location. That's why i said the radar array would have to have very strong defenses extending out 30 km in all 360 degree directions from each individual radar station. And if a group has that strong a level of military equipment already then i don't see why they would need this huge redundant array of radar stations all concentrated in a small area.
That depends very much so on the radar system. In practical terms, almost all the radar systems we're discussing here are going to be both transmitter and receiver in one design. You can't simply rely on passive radio energy to detect moving objects in a complex environment. You would want both passive and active beam forming in one instrument; not having both is just leaving some of the most valuable developments in modern radar on the table.
And the specific radar we're discussing, is an active, pulsed LFM phased-array radar. It does both, because, obviously it needs to do both. Its wouldn't be useful for its intended use if it cant do both.
Your information about passive radar detection is not up to date. There are tons of passive detection of radar systems that by design do zero emission. The radar array stations will need to emit in order to function, but the enemy can find those radar emitters without emitting any energy of their own
https://daronmont.com.au/products/passive-radar
Okay so I was overly general with my first statement.
No one is saying passive radar systems don't exist. We've been using them for decades and there have been massive improvements. But the actual radar system we're discussing here isn't. You simply aren't going to get the same capabilities from a purely passive system than you will from an active + passive system where you can tightly control the frequencies and directions you are transmitting on, and have the information about what frequencies you transmitted on, when you transmitted them, and how (what array configuration) you transmitted them. The point is that the transmission itself is structured to reveal certain information. So when you get a response back (also, coming back to a phased system), you can learn far more about your target than you could in a purely passive system because you that prior information about what you transmitted.
Your confused about what I'm saying. The ARRAY OF RADAR STATIONS is emitters. I'm saying THE ATTACKERS AGAINST the array of radar stations only need to be passive detectors.
No, I'm not confused whatsoever. You can not get the same kind of information using radar using the system you are describing. Period. You are confusing broad, beacon like radar systems (like a flashlight or a paint brush) with phased systems, which are fundamentally different.
Phased systems depend on nano-pico second scale precision in timing; you aren't accomplishing that across a distributed system. And the exact structure of the beam that is going to be formed is dependent on what the receiver has detected, whatever scan pattern is being used. They are a coupled system.
Basically you deny enemy armor and other infantry support into the area you are working in, which means the infantry can't operate effectively in that area.
I'm not understanding. Let's say army A has a radar array of 500 relatively cheap radar stations. They clump them all into a 1 square km area. So now army Z drives some howitzers nearby (which aren't detectable by ground based radar), waits till a radar station turns on, the passively locates the radar base station, and shoots a cheap shell at it which destroys it.
But if you say army A has the level of military equipment that can locate and destroy howitzers up to 30 km away in all directions, then what benefit does an array of concentrated radar stations provide?
I don't know where you are getting this 1km cluster idea from.
The point of cheaper radar systems is that you don't need to defend them as much, because destroying them requires equipment that's more expensive than the radar station. They overlap, and the locating that they provide can both protect the stations themselves and other targets in their coverage area.
How are those tanks going to maneuver undetected without air support?
That's the topic of the thread your replying in. Quote:
Yeah... A few
Radars are already deployed like that. Most radars sit many kilometers from each other because of interference and not needing the extra coverage. Radar coverage is absolutely enormous for modern systems.
A quad copter with 500g of payload would be just as effective
The drone operator would be in the radar station's LOS, even if this thing couldn't detect a drone, which it can...
I guess I'm not sure the point.
I don't know, what's the point of the more expensive stations these are comparable to?
Why suddenly are these required to be taken out by anti rad munitions?
It's radar. They're practically setting off a beacon of their location through operation.
No I'm not disagreeing with you on the principle and have been making the exact same argument about scaling and cost in regards to the US defense doctrine for years. But there is no special munitions required to take out a small radar system, which is basically a bunch of highly sensitive electronics which must be exposed for the instrument to work. Any basic quad drone with a reasonable payload could easily take one out.
This doesn't detract from you main point, which I entirely agree with and have been promoting for years.
I’m talking about HARM and friends because in terms of quickly executing a kill chain against a transmitting radar, antirad munitions are the gold standard. Sure, it can be done other ways. But it generally involves a lot more systems with relatively complex integration.
Yeah I mean, this speaks even further to the doctrinal difference I'm trying to highlight.
How are the Ukrainians pushing back on radar systems? Are they relying on anti-rad munitions? Well. No. We're seeing them using long range drones, which, arguably, is far less complex, much more versatile, easier to produce, and cheaper to produce. The difference highlights the doctrine difference.
This is all really a debate about how one thinks about fighting a war and what one values along the way.
Thanks for the insightful comment!